The Complete Listing of Data Visualization Conferences

Updated January 6, 2020

Nearly every week, after one of my in-person client workshops, a student will come up and say some variation of, “Ann, this one-day session is great, but now I’m ready to connect with others beyond my organization. I want to meet people from other cities, states, and countries who are struggling with similar struggles, and celebrating similar accomplishments. Help me find my tribe. I want to attend a multi-day data visualization conference!”

So, I sat down and began pulling all the details together–a list of the major data visualization conferences.

The 2020 Calendar

• March 23 – 27: Malofiej in Spain
• June 8 – 11: Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis
• September 24 – 27: Information+ in Atlanta
• October: IEEE VIS in Salt Lake City
• October 5 – 8: Tableau Conference in Las Vegas
• Others TBD: OpenVis, Tapestry, Visualized, industry-specific conferences

March 23 – 27, 2020: Malofiej in Spain

Malofiej, the Infographics World Summit, describes itself as turning the conference city into “the world capital of infographics.” Apparently this conference has been going on for 27 years–whoa!

The Details

• Next event: March 23 – 27, 2020 in Pamploma, Spain
• Length: A full week!
• Registration fees: 300 to 420 euros depending on how early you register (with student discounts available)
• Conference hashtag: #malofiej
• Website: http://www.malofiejgraphics.com/
• Get the inside scoop from: Nigel Hawtin (@NigelHawtin), Andy Kirk (@VisualisingData), Francis Gagnon (@chezVoila)

Ann’s Impressions

THE awards show for infographics.

Lots of data journalists. The speakers mostly work for newspapers, like the Times of Oman, O Globo, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

It seems very professional, very well organized, and very well regarded by the dataviz experts I admire.

What Other People Are Saying

My former coworker and personal friend, Katherine Haugh, attended Malofiej in 2019. In a blog post, she wrote: “I spent this past week in Pamplona, Spain at Malofiej 2019, an annual gathering of illustrators, journalists, and data scientists. I’m leaving the conference feeling inspired by all of the incredibly kind and incredibly talented people I met. Some of my overarching take-aways include: 1) start with your curiosities and develop the skills needed to answer them, not the other way around 2) the communication of a single message is more important than precision and 3) the more sensory, the more memorable. I’m inspired to engage more senses in my illustration and data visualization work.” You can read Katherine’s conference notes and takeaways here.

I first attended @Malofiej 8 years ago, when I was looking for learning opportunities & trying to figure out how to step up my graphics game. I’m still overwhelmed with gratitude when I think of the long-lasting global connections & collaborations it sparked. Highly recommended. https://t.co/uTO257slIQ

— Jen Christiansen (@ChristiansenJen) January 8, 2019

Find out what attending #malofiej is like…if you have never been, you are missing out 🙂 Beer, wine, G&T, pintxos, #infographics #datavis cheers Andy @visualisingdata https://t.co/psv3wk5Hbj

— Nigel Hawtin 🇪🇺 (@nigelhawtin) March 17, 2018

Ranging from old timers like me to those starting out.

— Nigel Hawtin 🇪🇺 (@nigelhawtin) January 10, 2019

An incredible list of talented judges for #Malofiej27! However, I am sad to see only 4 women. I value & respect the @Malofiej community & know that the breakdown isn’t always this uneven. But I feel it is important to draw attention to this and that the community does take notice https://t.co/jn2XQnRQkd

— Lauren Tierney (@tierneyl) January 9, 2019

Andy Kirk wrote about the Malofiej 2018 experience, and he even made a short film with co-producer Matt Knott:

June 8 – 11, 2020: Eyeo Festival in Minneapolis

Eyeo describes itself as “a gathering for the creative technology community… “The Eyeo Festival brings together a rich intersection of people doing fascinating things with technology. Artists, data designers, creative coders, AI explorers, storytellers, researchers, technology & platform developers all cross paths and share inspiration at Eyeo. Join us for 4 days of enthralling talks, unique workshops, the code+ summit, and thought provoking interactions lead by passionate thinkers and makers. You’ll love it. (And it’ll be better with you there.) Converge to Inspire.”

The Details

• Next event: June 8 – 11, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
• Registration fees: TBD
• Conference hashtag: #eyeo2020
• Website: http://eyeofestival.com/
• Get the inside scoop from: @eyeofestival, Jer Thorp (@blprnt), Francis Gagnon (@chezVoila)

Ann’s Impressions

Seems to have an arts/design focus more than a data/spreadsheets focus. For example, they mention architecture as one of the conference topics. I can’t think of any of my personal clients that would be a good fit for the Eyeo Festival.

I could (should) be learning more about the art/design side of data visualization. My background is in the data/research side, and I always learn a lot when I approach a topic from a different angle.

What Other People Are Saying

Francis Gagnon wrote about his Eyeo Festival 2018 experience. His quotes about interacting with fellow attendees stood out to me: “Eyeo is a special moment in time. It’s one of the most hyped conferences in several fields and it sells out quickly. Yet, so many of us stand in the middle of this rare mix of people, looking at our phones. Having conversations with people at home. Keeping strangers at a safe distance on Twitter. Watching or interacting mildly with acquaintances on Facebook. Plunging back into work on Slack, as if our brains didn’t remain there afterwards… The Eyeo organizers have gone to great lengths to make the experience of attending more real and less virtual. The workshops on Monday were very interactive, forcing the participants to get to know one another from the beginning. The delightful personalized button designed by Giorgia Lupi based on our answers to a survey were playful conversation starters. The program of the conference printed on the back of our name tags gave us one less excuse to pull out our phones to check the schedule and then slip into email or social media.” I’m afraid that phone use isn’t unique to Eyeo.

We’re bringing childcare and live captioning to Eyeo this year to make our event more accessible for everyone. We’re not going to increase ticket prices, so we’re looking for socially-minded companies to help out. Interested? Get in touch. cc/ @eyeofestival

— Jer Thorp (@blprnt) January 9, 2019

I LOVE how the @eyeofestival has been so thoughtful in making an already-amazing festival even better: Added diverse curators to improve representation, offering childcare during the event…See @blprnt‘s thread for details! (Who’s going? Registration opens Feb 4!) #eyeo2019 https://t.co/10PWBTrxyc

— Grace Rodriguez (@gracerodriguez) January 9, 2019

I’ve been to EyeO in 2018 and for an “analytical dataviz” person it’s really about opening our horizons. There were a few dataviz speakers (A Cox, G Lupi) but it was mostly people outside the field, in art and tech.

— Francis Gagnon | Voilà 📊 (@chezVoila) January 17, 2019

Frank Elvasky offered an insider scoop on Eyeo:

This list is good, but I want to stress that the value of @eyeofestival is not “the artistic side of dataviz” but one of the only places where we can challenge problematic issues in our field and also get inspired.

It’s not a good fit for bi analysts or data scientists https://t.co/UZTfxJROwb

— ⋄⋄⟢》Frank (@FrankElavsky) January 8, 2020

You can attend a talk about how missing data can be both intentional and racist, or chat with someone about why gestalt principles exclude dissonance-by-design, or just hear what someone is up to as they construct imaging data of attendees faces into physicalizations.

— ⋄⋄⟢》Frank (@FrankElavsky) January 8, 2020

Sure. It’s all “art” if you think things like critical theory or the praxis of dissent are just forms of aesthetic expression.

Eyeo is the only place that intentionally invites speakers excluded from typical data/software/tech. These margins are not just “art” but necessary.

— ⋄⋄⟢》Frank (@FrankElavsky) January 8, 2020

Thanks! I believe Eyeo is one of the most important conferences for our field, but it can seem esoteric from the outside.

It has some vague branding and has gone through growing pains here and there. But at its core is a commitment to a conversation in dataviz without borders.

— ⋄⋄⟢》Frank (@FrankElavsky) January 9, 2020

September 24 – 27, 2020: Information+ in Atlanta

I know very little about this conference, but it’s well-regarded by friends and acquaintances that I trust, so I want to learn more! If you’ve got the inside scoop, please comment and let me know.

The Details

• Next event: September 24 – 27, 2020 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• Registration fees: TBD
• Conference hashtag: #infoplus2020
• Website: http://www.informationplusconference.com/
• Get the inside scoop from: @InfoPlusConf, Isabel Meirelles (@IsabelMeirelles) Noah Illinsky (@NoahI)

Ann’s Impressions

The Program Committee is very, very impressive… Isabel Meirelles… Andy Kirk… Gregor Aisch… Robert Kosara… Nadieh Bremer… Elijah Meeks… Wow.

Information+ seems to be an every-other-year conference. They held one in 2016 and another in 2018, and they’re planning another one for 2020.

What Other People Are Saying

@IsabelMeirelles did say at the first @InfoPlusConf that it will be every-other-year! Maybe she could officially confirm! 🙂

— Georges Hattab (@GeorgesVis) January 23, 2019

Subscribe!
I <3 @InfoPlusConf

— Noah Iliinsky (@noahi) January 10, 2019

October 2020: IEEE VIS in Salt Lake City

They’ve held events since 1996–whoa!

The Details

• Next event: October 2020 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA
• Registration fees: In 2019: 645-970 euros for the full week, depending on how early you register, with all sorts of discounts and 1-day passes available for less. 2020 fees TBD.
• Conference hashtag: #IEEEVIS
• Website: http://ieeevis.org/year/2019/welcome. 2020 information has not been added yet
• Get the inside scoop from: @IEEEVIS, Lynn Cherny (@arnicas)

Ann’s Impressions

This seems to be THE conference to hear about the latest academic research on data visualization from universities around the world.

What Other People Are Saying

This is a week-long conference.

Seems like #ieeevis has been going on forever! i mean, great stuff, but sheesh, i need a catch up and rest 🙂

— Lynn Cherny (@arnicas) October 26, 2018

Attracts people from across the globe.

I know of 6ish colleagues who never got visas to #ieeevis in Berlin. All are middle-eastern or Indian-born researchers at American schools.

Word has it that the German government is nervous that they’ll lose ability to return, so it slow walks visas.

— Danyel Fisher (@FisherDanyel) October 25, 2018

In Fall 2018, all these conferences were basically scheduled on top of each other (oops).

Can’t remember any time ever before in this field when so many big chunky conference events are basically overlapping around the 🌍 #ieeevis #InfoPlus2018 #tc18 #nacis2018

— Andy Kirk (@visualisingdata) October 21, 2018

Would be nice to see different parts of the #dataviz community come together. Maybe the simultaneous conference threads for #ieeevis and #tc18 should be merged. https://t.co/oxqCNI1Gvd

— Jon Schwabish (@jschwabish) October 24, 2018

IEEE VIS has an embarrassing diversity problem that, as far as I can tell, hasn’t been addressed yet.

New open letter to the @ieeevgtc regarding the #ieeevis Visualization Academy. Signed by 30 researchers (and counting), the letter focuses on the lack of diversity in the 30 people chosen for its inaugural class: only 2 women, and 2 persons of color (6%). https://t.co/ObrV8z1obg

— Niklas Elmqvist (@NElmqvist) November 25, 2019

October 5 – 8, 2020: Tableau Conference in Las Vegas

When I sat down to write this guide, I didn’t plan on including software-specific conferences. Excel has multi-day conference events, and so does Adobe, and Google probably does, too. But I had to include Tableau here because it’s becoming such a major force in the data visualization field among my workshop participants.

The Details

• Next event: October 5 – 8, 2020 in Las Vegas; June 29 – July 1, 2020 in London
• Registration fees:  In 2019: USD $1,295 – $1,895 + depending on how early you register. 2020 Fees TBD
• Conference hashtag: #data20
• Website: https://www.tableau.com/community/events/conferences
• Recordings available online: Yes (all 361 sessions, wow!)
• Get the inside scoop from: Deven Wisner (@DevenWisner)

Ann’s Impressions

Since this is a software company’s conference, it seems like a great way to find out about the latest software features. They seem to make announcements on stage about all those new features being released.

Lots of Millenial-themed activities. I think I saw ping pong tables in some photos. They have some sort of photobooth where you can hold up props and write nerdy data stuff on whiteboards. I feel too old for this conference.

What Other People Are Saying

I’ve been to the @tableau conference once when I was lucky enough to have funding. It’s definitely for those going deep into data viz. The workshops were excellent. I’m not great at “networking” but it was nice to find other .gov folks out there!

— Melissa Correia (@melissacorreia) January 17, 2019

For Tableau it probably helps to use the software of course but it has a great mix of attendees and user profiles – artsy viz people, scientific, developer, business managers, it was so inspiring.

— Shannon Wampler (@saw2w) January 17, 2019

OpenVis

According to Lynn Cherny, “OpenVis is a top-tier conference about ‘open source data visualization’ tools and techniques (‘openvis’). ‘Open source’ means we concentrate the talks on tools that are freely available from the open source community, rather than for-pay solutions from vendors. Our talks are educational and not sales pitches, by design. We bring together an expert speaker panel of developers, designers, data journalists and analysts, and academics focused on practice rather than solely theory or portfolio reviews. We think this makes us unique.”

This conference used to take place in Boston (since 2013), but recently moved to Paris.

The Details

• Next event: Probably 2020 in Boston (they’re taking 2019 off)
• Length: 2 days, plus a 3rd day for workshops
• Registration fees: TBD
• Conference hashtag: None?
• Website: http://www.openvisconf.com/
• Recordings available online: Yes
• Get the inside scoop from: @OpenVisConf, Lynn Cherny (@arnicas), Amy Cesal (@AmyCesal)

Ann’s Impressions

The open-source-tool-focus is interesting. My first impression was that I would personally prefer to attend a best practices conference over a tool-based conference. But, you’ve got to use some sort of tool in dataviz, so why not master the open-source tools?

Too bad it’s based in Europe now! If/when it returns to the U.S. (likely to Boston in 2020), I might try to attend.

Like most conferences, the sessions are recorded and the videos are available online. So, like most conferences, the value is probably more in building relationships than in the session content.

OH! This was where Maarten Lambrechts introduced his xenographics project! So I have heard of this conference. That was a major project last year and I definitely had FOMO while “watching” the conference through the Twitter hashtag.

What Other People Are Saying

Lynn Cherny wrote a detailed post about OpenVis. Her article is a must-read for anyone considering OpenVis.

“I consider OpenVis to be like the world championship of datavis.” –Maarten Lambrechts

Open Vis is my absolute favorite!

— Amy Cesal (@AmyCesal) January 23, 2019

The conference is not sponsored by a corporate tech tool provider.

— Lynn Cherny (@arnicas) January 23, 2019

err, we have sponsorships from some of them sometimes, but it’s not organized from a particular tool shop

— Lynn Cherny (@arnicas) January 23, 2019

.@OpenVisConf team did a great job bringing diverse and inspiring speakers to the conference and made my experience so awesome. Definitely check out all the talks. I especially enjoyed @SteveFranconeri’s presentation, who talked about visual processing🤓 https://t.co/i3J0BxisP7

— Chloe Tseng (@datachloe) August 27, 2018

Must. Resist. Sinking. Into. Watching. All. The. @OpenVisConf 2018. Talks. https://t.co/DkPY3wDtRc pic.twitter.com/AjYh5YBCMg

— Andy Kirk (@visualisingdata) August 29, 2018

OpenVis is less academic than Info+, I would say.

— OpenVis Conf (@OpenVisConf) January 28, 2019

Tapestry

Tapestry is (was?) a two-day event in Miami that seems to focus on public-facing interactive graphics, which is an area I rarely work on. For example, at the 2018 event, Ken Field talked about The Cartography of Elections. (Most of my projects are private client-facing designs, which come with an entirely different set of design considerations than public-facing designs.)

The Details

• Next event: A Tapestry Conference 2020 is in the works for April or May 2020, but Robert Kosara says there are no real details yet – click to read about it. 
• Registration fees: TBD.
• Conference hashtag: #TapestryConf
• Website: http://www.tapestryconference.com/
• Get the inside scoop from: @TapestryConf, Robert Kosara (@eagereyes), Jon Schwabish (@PolicyViz), Cole Knaflic (@StoryWithData), Francis Gagnon (@chezVoila)

Ann’s Impressions

Seems like a great place to hear about the field of data visualization, if you can call us that. At the 2018 conference, for example, Elijah Meeks’ closing keynote was about the Third Wave of Data Visualization.

All the presentations seem to be recorded and available for free on YouTube? So… like most conferences… the point is to meet the people, not listen to the presentations?

What Other People Are Saying

Jon Schwabish and Cole Knaflic reflected on the conference experience on an episode of Jon’s PolicyViz Podcast.

Cole also wrote a blog post about the Tapestry experience.

It’s a small group, which is a major draw for lots of prospective attendees.

I met @AmyCesal & @MollzMP at the 2018 @tapestryconf in November and three months later we launched @DataVizSociety and it has over 3000 members in less than two week.
If that’s not a testimonial for a conference, I don’t know what is.

— Elijah Meeks (@Elijah_Meeks) March 5, 2019

Visualized

I wish I had more information about this conference. The conference website leads to a Vimeo page? Help me fill in the details, please!

The Details

• Next event: No 2020 event? (2017 event was held in Milan)
• Registration fees: ?
• Conference hashtag: #visualized
• Website: visualized.com, which redirects to https://vimeo.com/visualized
• Get the inside scoop from: @Visualized

Ann’s Impressions

This conference has existed since at least 2012.

Past events have taken place in Milan and New York. It’s hard to find out what’s going on with future conferences.

Is this an every-other-year event?

I’m really liking the size of this conference–big enough to meet plenty of cool people, yet small enough to not be overwhelming.

Milan = full house! pic.twitter.com/4g4998TbBM

— Visualized (@visualized) March 13, 2017

What Other People Are Saying

Thomas Dahn recapped the 2017 event in his blog post. Thomas writes, “On March 11, 2017, the 10th edition of New York-based event Visualized was held in Milan, Italy. It was the third time that the conference took place in a European city. Visualized is a data, storytelling and design-driven event. Presenting speakers who work in the emerging field of data visualization. The line-up in Milan had a nice mix of students, data researchers, data journalist, and designers. All with Italian roots. The gender balance was good, it felt like there were more female speakers on stage then male. The venue for this Visualized edition was the new creative hub Base Milano, a nice restored train factory in the center of Milan.”

Almost Every Industry-Specific Conference

The American Evaluation Association has a Data Visualization and Reporting track, so you can attend these conference sessions and hear from practitioners who are using some dataviz in their own work.

One of my favorite clients, the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, held its second Advancing Analytics for Children’s Hospitals two-day conference in June 2019. Although it’s not a dataviz conference, any conference that’s focused on analytics is going to have tons and tons of data and graphs.

And speaking of Chicago, Andrew Means’ Good Tech Fest will probably have sessions about building a culture of data in the social sector, of which data visualization is one component.

Jorge Camoes mentioned NTTS:

NTTS is about official statistics with a section on dissemination (including #dataviz). Not sure if fits your definition of #dataviz conf. I love to be there and, one week later, attend Malofiej, for a totally different experience. I have no idea where My People go, tbh.

— wisevis (@wisevis) January 17, 2019

Kenny Gruchalla told me about a Conference Calendar that describes even more conferences:

The VRVis Conference Calendar https://t.co/7gjTOLPW7g is a good resource — it’s an incomplete listing of (academic research) conferences related to computer graphics. Here are the series with “visualization” in the name https://t.co/G5WOWPZCri

— Kenny Gruchalla (@GruchallaKenny) January 22, 2019

In the Netherlands we have the @InfographicsNL conference in November and (new this year) in April the S-H-O-W conference (https://t.co/cWR1TQD5qQ). Both 100% dataviz!

— GraphicHunters (@GraphicHunters) January 23, 2019

Visualizing Knowledge is organized annually by the information students at @AaltoARTS. It started originally as an attempt to make visualizarion better known in Finland, and was in its early days especially geared towards non-experts.

— Juuso Koponen (@infomuotoilu) January 23, 2019

Although the conference still has remarkably many participants from the Finnish public sector, in the last years it has become more international, and has more to offer for the intermediate-level viz people as well. 🙂

— Juuso Koponen (@infomuotoilu) January 23, 2019

Maybe you want to add the IBCS Annual Conference: https://t.co/N72CTSXCY3 have a look at past years conference pages to get an idea of the topics discussed!

— Raphael Branger (@rbranger) January 22, 2019

The Verdict

Your budget is limited. And so is your time. Most of us can’t spend all our money and time globe-trotting and attending every single conference just for fun.

If I could attend just one data visualization conference in 2020…

I would attend Malofiej.

I think it’s a setting where I could gain practical skills; push my boundaries about what’s even possible; get inspiration; and meet friendly people that I could stay in touch with online even after the conference ends. The awards portion is simultaneously the conference’s biggest strength and weakness; seeing the best infographics in the world would be inspiring and intimidating all at once. But, none of that matters. I’ve got two tiny kiddos. I only travel internationally for client projects. Travelling internationally for a conference is out of the question for a few more years.

Limited by time and/or money? You can always attend your city’s meet-up group. Or, organize your own group! And there’s always online training, hint hint nudge nudge.

Here’s what others are saying:

My tip for ALL conferences: you’re not going for the talks, but to meet people. Talks or material are online. So choose conferences for the profile of people who attend and then get out of your phone and say hello https://t.co/RyGVl9DbPV https://t.co/hTp1yMeO18

— Francis Gagnon | Voilà 📊 (@chezVoila) January 17, 2019

Hi Ann. @tapestryconf and @InfoPlusConf are generally a genuine mix of acad, design, and ddj.@malofiej is largely ddj (cheap plug, my vid doc >> https://t.co/odIatostHD).@eyeofestival is freelance/studio designer and developer dominant. @ieeevis naturally very academic

— Andy Kirk (@visualisingdata) January 17, 2019

I forgot to add @OpenVisConf which probably reflects the DNA of the speakers and attendees at Info+ but with more of a technical/developer leaning

— Andy Kirk (@visualisingdata) January 17, 2019

Your Turn

What conferences am I missing, either dataviz-focused conferences or industry-specific conferences with some dataviz sessions or tracks?

What details am I missing? I listed the dates for the next event, the conference website, and so on. Do you wish there was information about, say, the number of attendees at a typical conference?

And most importantly–if you’ve attended any of these conferences already, what’s your impression? I’m not looking for Debbie Downers or pessimists or conference-bashers here. I’m trying to figure out the academic backgrounds, career settings, interests, etc. of the typical person who attends these conferences. For example, if a graphic designer wanted to attend a dataviz conference, which one should she attend? What about a data journalist? What about an academic researcher? Where would they find their tribe? Help me fill in the gaps!